Professor Peer Zumbansen, founding director of the Dickson Poon Transnational Law Institute at King’s College London, will deliver the annual lecture for the Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL) on Friday 13 March.
Entitled ‘International Law’s Local Blindside: Reflecting on the Public and Private in Global Governance’, Professor Zumbansen’s lecture will explore the nature of international legal sovereignty. He will be introduced by Kent Law School’s most recently appointed Emeritus Professor Wade Mansell.
In the abstract for his lecture, Professor Zumbansen says: ‘…the lecture attempts to draw our attention to the domestic legal-political realm, where negotiations of sovereignty claims, justifications as well as contestations of state intervention or debates around the validity and legitimacy of norms in ‘law’ or ‘non-law’ occur on a daily basis, and often with very little reference to ‘public’ law. Building on this look at the ‘domestic’, we might be able to better recognise some of the continuities between ideology battles on the global and the local level.’
The lecture, to be preceded by a drinks reception at 5pm in Keynes Teaching Foyer, will begin at 6pm in Keynes Lecture Theatre 3. All staff and students are welcome.
On the same day, Professor Zumbansen will also attend a CeCIL workshop entitled ‘The Victims of International Law’ beginning at 1.30pm in Keynes S17, during which members of CeCIL will present their work in progress.
Professor Zumbansen studied philosophy and law in Germany and France before receiving an LLM from Harvard Law School, followed by a doctorate and the post-doctoral, Habilitation from Frankfurt’s Goethe University.
He held the prestigious Canada Research Chair at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto for 10 years and has held visiting professorships at Idaho, Bremen, Bilbao and Oñati (Spain), Lucerne and St. Gallen (Switzerland), UCD Dublin, Javeriana (Bogotà), Melbourne, Lisbon and Yale Law School.
Professor Zumbansen joined The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London in July 2014 as the inaugural Professor of Transnational Law. His research is focused on private law theory, comparative and transnational law.
CeCIL is an innovative research centre, based at Kent Law School, which aims to foster critical approaches to the field of international law, and other areas of law that touch upon global legal problems.
In addition to an annual lecture, CeCIL offers a programme of activities for Kent Law students. The Centre also organises workshops designed to engage scholars based at other institutions, and strives to engage students, scholars and practitioners interested in the critical study of international law around the world through developing collaborations and joint research efforts.
Current and past activities of the Centre have focused on key themes in critical international legal scholarship, including the production of victimhood in and through international legal frameworks and interventions, and economic and social rights in the neoliberal age.